Does “drop the hammer” come from guns? Carlos *** Dear Carlos, Yes and no. Or rather, sometimes. I started out thinking this would be a breezy etymological jaunt, but nope – ended up in corpus research. Which is cool, since I’ve done plenty of etymology lately. I’m going to go through my steps and missteps, […]
Dear Language Nerd, What’s the word for when you mishear something and make up a new word for it? Acorn something? Delphine *** Dear Delphine, You’re looking for eggcorn, which is itself an eggcorn of “acorn.”* An eggcorn is a reinterpretation of a word or phrase. Something with an obscure meaning is changed to something […]